Towers of Fire
by dyinq
Summary: Sirius Black is good at fighting, and flirting, and faking, and smoking. Wolfstar. (TW for graphic self-harm and mentions of abuse.)


Sirius Black was good at fighting, and flirting, and faking, and smoking.

At night, he would crawl out of his window, letting his feet dangle hundreds of meters above the ground, and he would smoke. He would smoke and smoke and smoke and smoke until his clothes reeked and his throat burned and the sun rose, and then he would carefully, very carefully, clamber back inside and throw himself into his bed.

Perhaps the other fifth-years noticed. Or perhaps they didn't. Because despite the fact that Sirius could smoke the living hell out of Hogwarts itself, he was good at hiding things.

Like burns on thighs and fags beneath mattresses and cuts on wrists.

* * *

It was a biting winter night, and Sirius was alone.

He could have stayed inside with his mates, who were probably all fast asleep by now, or he could have tried to get some rest, for the first time in days, or, just this once, he could have allowed himself to be comfortable-

but no. Of course not.

He sat outside, balanced carefully on a stone rock just adjacent to his windowsill, overlooking the bleak and snowy grounds of Hogwarts- _his home-_ the light of his cigarette illuminating his sunken cheeks and wild dark eyes and even wilder hair.

And Sirius smoked, for hours and hours and hours, warming up his frozen lungs with fire- and then, when he was just angry enough, he dropped his cigarette down on his exposed thigh.

He hissed. Bloody Jesus-

He was used to it, though.

 _At least the cigarette was able to warm up his thawed skin._

* * *

Remus knew.

And, one night, he snuck out onto the precarious perch, too.

"Christ, Padfoot, this is terrifying," he told his ashen-faced friend, who smiled slightly.

"I _am_ a thrillseeker," Sirius replied, and that was the truth. He was.

"Yeah. Alright."

The silence that hung between them was not an awkward, bad, or uncomfortable one. It was simple and loving and dark all wrapped into the few inches of air that lay between the two friends.

"Want one?" Sirius asked as he pulled out a new box of cigarettes. Remus shook his head lightly, thoughtfully.

"No thanks, mate."

Sirius smiled in acknowledgment, although he still lit one for himself.

He drew in great puffs of the fire and nicotine, allowing the mixture to fill his lungs and himself, before gently blowing out great gusts of whitish-grayish smoke.

"Like crushed diamonds," he told Remus.

* * *

It was another three weeks before Remus visited Sirius outside again.

This time, they did not talk. And Sirius smoked, and smoked, and smoked, and Remus watched, and watched, and watched.

The silence was heavy. But it was friendly. It was loving.

And then slowly, impossibly slowly, Remus reached a hand out to Sirius' exposed thigh.

 _Fucking shit fuck,_ Sirius thought to himself. _My fucking boxers must have slid up._

And there they were- burn marks, all lined up in scattered and disoriented rows, reddened and whitened and purpled, lovely and rigid and _horrible._

"Fuck," Sirius cursed aloud, and Remus did not respond. Instead, he kept his hand there, enclosing the boundless red circles with his palm.

 _I think you're wonderful,_ he wanted to say.

"Tomorrow night is a full moon, and I don't want tomorrow to come," he announced instead.

* * *

Sirius was angry, and so he cut himself.

He was angry about _so many goddamn things_ , and he was sad, and he was overwhelmed, and he hurt. He hurt _himself._

It didn't make things any easier. It didn't take away the pain. It kind of just… put it on hold. Plus, Sirius liked seeing his blood. Somehow, it proved his existence. It proved that he was okay.

Which he wasn't. But he liked to think that he was.

* * *

Sirius Black was good at hiding things, _especially_ the cuts on his wrists.

A nick there, a slice there, and he was good. He was _fine._

A sleeve rolled down, and there were no questions. A sleeve rolled down, and he was back to himself, and he was good at fighting and flirting and faking and smoking and cutting and being sad.

* * *

"Stop this shit."

It was midnight. Precisely midnight.

Outside, Remus was sitting next to Sirius. Inside, the rest of the Gryffindors were fast asleep.

Sirius let out a shocked breath. _Moony? Cussing? Fuck, he must have messed up-_

"You're self-destructing."

Remus was quiet. Sirius was quiet. All, for once, was quiet.

"I smoke. That's hardly a crime, you know-"

"And you burn. And you cut."

 _Not hidden so well, then, SHIT-_

"Shut up, Moony. I don't do any of that crap," Sirius tried, his voice only an inch above a tired whisper.

Remus grabbed his arm. Pushed his worn sleeve up. Gazed at the endless multicolored lines that littered Sirius' impossibly pale skin. Then, after a fraction of a second, he pushed it back down.

"Nasty habit," Sirius muttered. Remus looked away.

"I can help you quit. If-if you want, that is," the smaller boy mumbled, running his fingers through his mousy brown hair.

Sirius squeezed his eyes shut- _I like you, but I also like my habits_ \- and he shook his head, letting his messy locks cover his sunken face.

"They protect me," he answered.

And, for the first time in over a year, Sirius didn't smoke.

Sirius climbed back inside the dormitory and fell asleep.

* * *

 _You're self destructing._

Sirius dropped his cigarette down on his thigh, wincing as it made contact with his pasty skin.

"Fuck," he whispered, watching as the dying cigarette spiraled down from his scathed leg and towards the ground below.

He stared out at the sky, wishing and hoping and dreaming and-

"Fuck."

* * *

Sirius was a good drunk.

One bottle of vodka. That was all he brought out with him.

"Fuckin' good time, mate," he said as Remus joined him on the jagged ledge.

"Sirius, what the _hell_ is going on- have you been drinking?" Remus asked, the last word of his question filled with absolute _venom_. Sirius shrugged, whipping out the vodka bottle from behind him and taking another deep swig.

"Just an eensy weensy bit," he replied, chuckling to himself. Remus bit his lip.

"You should come inside. Get some rest."

"I'm not going back in there, Moony. Idiots, the lot of them. You're nice, though. Stay out here, won't you, Moony? It gets lonely, smoking. By myself."

Remus gulped.

"You're not smoking," he observed.

"Already have," Sirius answered, tossing an empty cardboard cigarette box at his friend, who reached out and caught it in one fluid motion.

"Whole thing?"

Sirius burped, laughing.

"Yuppers. The whole fucking thing."

"Please, watch your language-"

"Ah, you're no fun. Maybe you _do_ belong inside. With the rest of the tossers. Just wanted to get a bit pissed, just wanted to smoke my fucking lungs off, you know?"

And then Sirius drank and drank and drank and drank, and Remus watched and watched and watched and watched.

"Get inside, you useless lump," he told Sirius when the vodka was done. "And wait for tomorrow morning. That'll be a riot."

Sirius brushed himself off and stood up, grabbing onto the icy stone walls of Hogwarts for support.

"Welcome to the teenage spirit, Moony. Teenage spirit."

* * *

"Sorry about last night," Sirius muttered, looking up at the sky and trying to feel the world spin beneath him. Remus smiled softly, kindly, beautifully.

"You were wasted."

"I was looking for something," Sirius admitted, and Remus' smile fell. He reached over to his friend, touching his shoulder impossibly gently.

"What?"

"What do you _think_?"

A pause, and then-

"I think you're great, Padfoot."

* * *

The snow didn't stop Sirius from smoking. Remus guessed that absolutely nothing could.

They sat outside together, the werewolf shivering under his sweater and pyjama pants and the messy maniac blissfully content in his t-shirt and boxers.

"They hit me," Sirius said painlessly, comfortably, sadly.

"Who?" Remus mumbled, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his sweater.

"Mum. Dad. After I got into Gryffindor, it turned into a bit of a sport for them. I bet they knew I wasn't going to be Slytherin, but they kept their disgusting mouths closed until their prediction proved true," Sirius admitted, lighting his cigarette and shoving it into his mouth with feverish agony.

"Padfoot-"

"I hate myself. I hate myself, and then I hurt myself. I hurt myself thinking that it'll help me, that it'll make my pain go away, but it doesn't. And when I look in the mirror, I hate myself all over again. Even more."

Sirius drew in a great breath of fire before slowly letting the smoke escape his lips. _Like liquid glass._

"I'm so sorry," Remus whispered, and he was, _he was._

"Yeah, well, I cut because I like the release, but I never get the release. I smoke because I like the pain, but the pain isn't the _right_ kind of pain, you know? And I drink to forget, but I always remember in the morning. Horrid rotation of shit that doesn't work," Sirius commented, smiling.

Remus was close to tears as he reached out for his friend's cigarettes.

"Please, let me help you quit-"

Sirius snagged the box away from his friend's eager fingers.

"No." His answer was crude. Biting.

Remus sighed, dropping his hands back into his pockets.

"I push people away because I know that I'm a piece of shit. God, I am. I am _such a piece of shit._ "

A blissful moment of silence, then-

"Go back to bed, Padfoot," Remus ordered kindly, softly, forcefully. Sirius sniffed and pushed his hair back off of his face.

Miraculously, he stood up and headed inside.

"Moony?" He called, pressing his fingers against the window to the dormitory.

"Yeah?"

 _Thank you, for everything, for everything a million times over, thank you for listening, thank you, thank you, thank you-_

"Nothing. Never mind. Goodnight."

* * *

It was a pitch-black night, the kind of night that looked like absolute _poison_ , and Remus' eyes glowed like heaven.

"Does being a werewolf ever make you angry?" Sirius asked, lighting a fag and watching it intently.

"No, not angry. Sad. It makes me sad."

And Remus certainly _looked_ sad, at least at three in the morning.

"Angry is better than sad," Sirius said thoughtfully, dropping his still unused (but lit) cigarette down on his exposed thigh. Immediately, his skin seemed to wrinkle in on itself, turning a nasty shade of crimson. _God._

"Padfoot, what the _bloody hell_ did you just do?" Remus cried, yanking the cigarette away and quickly blowing it out. "Christ- doesn't it hurt? Oh, God, it's bleeding!" He exclaimed, but Sirius simply sat there, relishing in the pain that he didn't need and didn't want and _fucking Jesus what the fuck was he doing oh fucking Merlin-_

"I need help," he eventually muttered, so softly and incoherently that, at least at first, Remus couldn't understand him, but then, all of a sudden, Remus did, _Remus did understand._

"I'll help you, Padfoot. Just let me in; that's all I ask of you."

And Sirius began to cry.

* * *

It was a very hot and very humid summer night, and Sirius Black was not smoking.

He still did. Quite a lot, actually, but not everyday. He rarely ever burned, either, and when he did, he regretted it. Because he realized that pain was not an answer, it was a _distraction,_ and he didn't want to be distracted anymore.

He wanted to be happy.

Well, there was actually a lot of him that wanted to be sad, really motherfucking sad, but he tried to not let that part of his soul get the best of him.

He was angry, though. Angry he was, and angry he would forever be.

Angry is better than sad.

However, he was not smoking.

He was not destructing. _Not tonight._

Remus smiled over at his friend, his hair ruffled from the summer breeze, his eyes alight.

"Thanks, Moony."

A small thanks. That was all Sirius could offer.

 _Thank you. Thank you for giving me the world. Thank you for showing me the way out of the hole I had dug for myself. Thank you, thank you, thank you-_

"You asked for help; I gave you help. I'm not a superhero. Just a friend," Remus mumbled, looking over the ledge of the windowsill and down at the grounds of Hogwarts- _his home-_ below.

"You're fucking amazing, Moony. What will I do without you this summer?" Sirius asked, and Remus remembered what he had said so many months before- _"they hit me"_ \- and his answer was simple.

"Tell someone."

Sirius gulped and looked away, running a hand through his wild black hair.

"It's not as easy as it sounds- _shit._ What am I going to do without you this summer?" Sirius asked again, and this time, Remus' answer was _not_ simple, it was about as complicated and stupid and wonderful as answers could be-

Moony kissed Padfoot.

It was short, impossibly sweet, and not at all made of harsh lines and angles like Remus had expected.

It was a broken kiss. It was a crude and unforgiving and marvelous and perfect kiss, and it was for those reasons that both Remus and Sirius knew that it could not happen again.

They were too damaged for something so purely good.

* * *

On the last night before summer holiday began, they kissed again.

And again.

And again.

* * *

Sirius Black was good at fighting, and flirting, and faking, and smoking.

He was also good at kissing, and drinking, and fucking, and cussing.

He was covered in scars and filled with secrets, but he was okay, _he was okay,_ and he was a wonderful, crazy, magical, angry, beautiful, loving, sad, perfect story, a _perfect_ story that was still being written.

* * *

 _Loneliness_

 _burns in_

 _towers of_

 _fire around_

 _us._

 _Christopher Poindexter_


End file.
